When a PR damages a product image like this you have to wonder, what the heck was he thinking? Unless you have not been online for the last days, then you already know about the edrama “OceanMarketting” (now known as OceanStratagy, yeah he misspelled the twitter handle!) and Penny Arcade.
Haven seen bad PR before, this guy really took the gold from all of them and did it like a champ! Check this Penny Arcade article if you haven’t.
So what’s my take and thoughts on this? Simple. Clients can be real trolls sometimes, people can get mad and spam your inbox with lots of crap. I myself have been admin in online communities and know how people can bash at you when they are pissed.
That is normal and is never going to change, but they’re players and customers, they are asking for a service and they are not a company representative, Paul Christoforo from OM was. When you have a position of power, specially in the PR field you cannot go threatening people like he did.
Early morning commenting with a friend i told her he should have emailed an apology to the customer right after those emails and i quote:
Mario: wont be easier to offer an apology even if its a lie?
Anna: ^this
Mario: “i do offer an apology, a bad mix of tylenol and beer made me go nuts and i truly sorry”
Anna: xD
But he didn’t, he thought he could go “Gangsta” on a small ant called Dave, but this is the internet and a small ant can gather thousands of small ants and we all small ants can become a real nasty badass crowd of Killer ants!
Certainly he did apologize to Dave and Penny Arcade published the so called apology. Now i want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as i stated before it may be a blatant lie.
After i was linked to this article in Kotaku, i wondered what kind of moron this guy really was that is even impersonating representatives of the Avenger controllers, go here and have a good read, this guy is something else!
So throwing my 2 cents and i’m done with this, people can sometimes be morons (not saying Dave was a moron) but you as a PR must remain calm, not going gangsta on them. Had a bad day? take a breath, get up and stay away from the computer, believe me i know.
The last thing you want to do when you are about to explode is sitting in front of a computer, take your time and then reply to people when you are in a better mood, as a simple internet user you can spam, rant and curse all you want, as the PR of a product you can’t, you only damage the people you are working for.
Avenger controllers got a tremendous hit and the image of the product could have been damaged forever (we will see) just because someone having a “bad day” decided to go bonkers with a hardcore gamer.
To Paul; welcome to the internet, grow a thicker skin or search a new area of work because this is how a lot of people roll, i heard the mayor of boston is hiring janitors.
Thanks for reading,
Mario.
